It always amazes me when I'm researching a story and find one that I wrote over
the summer or the spring
and have no recollection of ever having done that piece. It reminds me of how fast
things move in the federal
community and that I'm getting old.

Without a doubt, 2013 ranks as high on the list of interesting and newsworthy
years among the last 16 I've
covered in the federal community. We saw a government shutdown, a major
administration program fall on its
face and a host of smaller, but just as important developments from mobile to big
data to the first attempt at
IT and acquisition reform in a decade that will continue the government's
evolution.

I asked more than a dozen current and former federal officials for their top
choices of IT and acquisition
stories for 2013. The following is a list compiled based on all their answers.

HealthCare.gov - Without a doubt the management and technology failings of
the Affordable Care
Act portal received the most comments and votes from my panel of experts. Not
surprising, given the fact it
was the Obama administration's main legislative accomplishment over the last five
years and how much
attention it received across the country.

At the same time, many agency chief information officers, IT and acquisition
experts say it also spurred
better, more substantive discussions around IT and procurement reform. One agency
official said
HealthCare.gov demonstrated the importance of "getting IT right" as a major
success factor for policy
initiatives, and reinforcing what happens when you take technology implementation
for granted. Just this
week President Barack Obama met with private sector CEOs to discuss the
challenges around IT and
procurement. The White House's statement on the meeting: "The President made clear
his continued focus on
improving the way we deliver technology to maximize innovation, efficiency and
customer service, and
encouraged the CEOs to continue to share their ideas on how to do so."

Pay attention here, this is a precursor to the steps the administration and
Congress plan to take in the coming
months, especially now that the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) didn't
make it in the final version
of the Defense authorization bill, passed by the Senate Thursday. Several sources
say the most recent CIO
Council meeting featured a long discussion on where the administration needs to go
with IT and procurement
reform.

Leaks by Edward Snowden - Easily the second most mentioned story of 2013. And
my experts say this is
broader than just information leaks, but encompasses the entire debate over the
National Security Agency's
use of technology and the renewed focus on stopping or limiting the damage from
insider threats.

One executive said the government is actively fortifying its insider threat
protections as a result of Snowden-
related leaks. The President received recommendations earlier this week from a committee of experts
detailing 46
recommendations to improve the privacy and civil liberties of signal intelligence
collection. These changes
also will impact the federal contractor community, especially in the wake of the
shootings and tragedy at the
Navy Yard.

The idea of contractor support and security clearances have come under more
scrutiny and will continue into
2014, many experts say. In fact, the Defense Department announced earlier this
week at the Senate Homeland
Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing on protecting federal facilities
that it's testing a new
continuous monitoring approach to security clearances.

Stephen Lewis, the DoD's deputy director for Personnel, Industrial and
Physical Security Policy in the
Directorate of Security Policy and Oversight in the Office of Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence, told
committee members that the Pentagon established a "pilot on continuous evaluation,
which is going to look
at — do queries, automated queries of public and DOD records, to look for
issues of concern."

Additionally, several experts have said contractors are suffering from the
Snowden-effect worldwide as
foreign countries are hesitant to do business with them because of the NSA's
intrusions and capabilities. One
former federal executive said, "The combination of anti-contractor rhetoric
generated by the actions of these
individuals and a widely acknowledged need to review the entire security clearance
process, has led to a
series of studies and analyses that could either lead to smart, thoughtful change
or could adversely affect
how companies are allowed support the government in the future. In either case the
government's ability to
respond to national security threats could be hampered by an inability to access
key skills in a timely
manner."

Shutdown and ongoing budget debate - The impact on IT and acquisition was
clear from the beginning.
Agencies had to delay major projects and contracts. For example, the General
Services Administration
delayed solicitation responses to the huge OASIS multiple award contract for
professional services. The
Defense Intelligence Agency pushed back the $6 billion E-SITE contract industry
day, which delayed the
release of the request for proposals. Even the IRS had to delay tax season, in
part, so it could update systems
with new requirements from Congress. And a recent survey from Market Connections,
Inc. and Lohfeld
Consulting Group, Inc. found 31 percent of vendors say they saw their revenue
decline by more than 10
percent in 2013 because of sequestration and the shutdown, while 30 percent said
their revenue decrease by
less than 10 percent.

Associated with the budget crunch is the government's move to lowest-price,
technically acceptable
procurements, which also is wreaking havoc on the vendor community. Additionally,
the IT passback from the
Office of Management Budget, which usually comes right around Thanksgiving, is
delayed until after Jan. 1,
according to multiple government sources. This cuts down the time agencies have to
prepare to implement
the new IT and acquisition policies. With Congress passing a topline budget for
the next two years, makes
planning a little easier, some of the federal executives say they are hopeful for
some stability in their budget
situations. A New Year's resolution from Congress, maybe?

Mobility - Several CIOs and executives mentioned the progress agencies made in
not only moving away
from the traditional BlackBerry devices, but implementing the Digital Government
Strategy, using Application
Programming Interfaces (APIs) and taking advantage of virtualization to improve
how citizens consume
services through smartphones and tablet computers.

Lack of progress on cybersecurity from Congress - This is a story that
actually started in 2012, but the
situation got no better this year. One CIO said lawmakers' inability to find
common ground led to the White
House's cyber executive order. It was one of the few positive outcomes because of
the lack of action by the
Hill. At the same time, the administration worked most of the year to get agencies
set up to implement
continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM) as part of its move to dynamic and
away from static
cybersecurity. That will make 2014 a big year for cyber improvements. One CIO said
agencies "need better
ways to stay ahead of the bad guys and more training in because we are losing the
battle." The most obvious
examples of those battle wounds are the attacks and cyber problem at the Energy
and Veterans Affairs
departments that came to light this year.

Changing roles of CIOs - This could easily be tied to the HealthCare.gov and
FITARA conversation. But a
couple of executives made interesting points around the move by OMB to give CIOs
oversight over commodity
IT and the increased need for collaboration to around issues such as open
government, PortfolioStat 2.0 and
the second term management agenda. In fact, OMB earlier this year created
a new CXO Collaboration Team to help break down any artificial barriers. Add
to that the mandate to
seriously consider shared services, especially around financial management, and
the move to the cloud, CIOs'
role will continue to evolve. As an aside to the changing role of the CIO, the
poor reaction by the White House
to the HealthCare.gov debacle and not providing political cover for the Health and
Human Services and
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services CIOs and, what one source called the
"defenestration" of former
DHS CIO Richard Spires, didn't sit well with many senior technology
managers.

A funny thing happened to me at the Federal Cloud Computing Summit sponsored by
MobileGovt earlier this week after I commented about my disdain for Major League
baseball in the wake of the 1994 strike — I know it's been almost 20 years
and I should get over it. San Francisco Giants CIO Bill Schlough decided to
try and "convince" me to come back to baseball.

During his fascinating speech about how the Giants are using big data in the cloud
to analyze players, determine strategy and make the fan experience better, he
decided to poke a little fun at me by calling me out to the audience a couple of
times for my disparaging comments about baseball. At the end of his speech,
Schlough called me on stage and took one last crack at getting me to change my
mind. He presented me with a San Francisco Giants 2012 replica World Series ring.
Did it work? I'll withhold comment; I've learned my lesson, so to speak.

Speaking of the cloud summit, GSA's Mark Day, the acting deputy assistant
commissioner in the Integrated Technology Services office of the Federal
Acquisition Service, said agencies spent more than $550 million on cloud services
through governmentwide acquisition contracts, while they spent less than $100
million on cloud-specific contracts, such as email-as-a-service or infrastructure-
as-a-service. Day said the difference in the spend shows integration services are
important to agencies.

It's also one of the reasons GSA continues to test the cloud broker concept with
DHS and HHS. Day said GSA is looking at the cloud broker model along the lines of
vendors who integrate, vendors who customize and vendors who aggregate.

"There's a cloud broker who can help do security, single sign-on tie-ins for all
cloud providers. You could have a cloud broker do security monitoring in a
standardized way across all cloud providers, giving you a single pane of glass to
manage from. You could integrate legacy and cloud so it's easier to manage your
pieces," Day said. "There's a whole set of layers as you start to think this
through that a cloud broker could do. Now the question is, which of those
functions can a cloud broker do economically and efficiently for the federal
government? Where do they add value? Where do they drive speed to market? Where do
they make it easier for the consumer to know what they've actually gotten and be
able to anticipate problems and react to problems better? And where frankly, are
they just an added cost?"

Day added GSA is digging into and testing those questions to understand the value
proposition for the government. GSA is about six weeks away from the pilot ending,
and then they will analyze to see what worked well and what didn't.

The Small Business Administration has a new CIO. Renee Macklin is taking
over from Chase Garwood.

Macklin joins SBA from the Commerce Department's International Trade
Administration. Garwood had been acting CIO since March and deputy CIO at SBA
since August 2012.

Garwood is heading back to DHS, where he spent the first 11 years of his post-Army
career, to work in the Science and Technology Directorate's resiliency office.
Garwood previously served as the chief technology officer of DHS' U.S. Visit
program and CIO of the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD).

In an email to staff obtained by Federal News Radio, Garwood said he hopes to
provide DHS with some good practical and operational experience, and help the
continued movement of research and development, and applied technology into the
hands of DHS operational missions.

"SBA has an important mission, but supporting homeland security and first
responders is just too much in my DNA and what gets me excited to go to work and
serve," he wrote.

Macklin spent the last 12 years at ITA after serving as a programmer for the CIA
and working for large telecommunications firms.

The shuffle of Garwood and Macklin, as well as the Office of Personnel
Management's announcement that Donna
Seymour, former deputy chief human capital officer for the Defense Department,
is the new CIO, is likely the first of several CIO changes coming in the new year
so be on the lookout for others to move around.

This just in late on Friday from OMB, the improper payment rate dropped to 3.54
percent in 2013 from 3.74 percent in 2012.

A new blog post by OMB Deputy Director for
Management Beth Cobert said the rate in 2009 when President Obama came into
office was 5.42 percent, meaning the rate dropped almost 2 percent in five years.

"Over the past year, we reduced improper payment rates in major programs across
the government, including Medicaid, Medicare Advantage (Part C), Unemployment
Insurance, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP - Food Stamps),
Pell Grants, and two Social Security programs — Supplemental Security Income
(SSI) and Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance," Cobert wrote.
"Furthermore, agencies recovered more than $22 billion in overpayments through
payment recapture audits and other methods in FY 2013."

Agencies have been using data analytics and innovative approaches such as recovery
auditing, to reduce improper payments.

Cobert said OMB is expanding the use of innovative approaches.

"OMB has also begun conducting a comprehensive analysis of agency-specific
corrective actions to identify programs with the highest return-on-investment or
potential for substantially reducing improper payments," she said. "This analysis
will help shape guidance on improper payments to be released in the months ahead."